Fallout shelters making a comeback

Whoops! Just when you've finally removed those cracked yellow and black 50 year old Civil Defense signs from your grandparents' or old office building basement along comes a new report with news you hopefully will never have to use; those air raid atomic bomb fallout shelters might be useful after all.

Apparently resigned to the fact that their governmental counterparts--and the UN--have failed in their half hearted efforts to derail Iran, North Korea and who knows what other unstable American hating regime from getting nuclear weapons, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has taken us back to the 50s of coping with nuclear fallout.

The government has a surprising new message: Do not flee. Get inside any stable building and don't come out till officials say it's safe.The advice is based on recent scientific analyses showing that a nuclear attack is much more survivable if you immediately shield yourself from the lethal radiation that follows a blast, a simple tactic seen as saving hundreds of thousands of lives. Even staying in a car, the studies show, would reduce casualties by more than 50 percent; hunkering down in a basement would be better by far.

There, you feel safer already.

Whoops! Just when you've finally removed those cracked yellow and black 50 year old Civil Defense signs from your grandparents' or old office building basement along comes a new report with news you hopefully will never have to use; those air raid atomic bomb fallout shelters might be useful after all.

Apparently resigned to the fact that their governmental counterparts--and the UN--have failed in their half hearted efforts to derail Iran, North Korea and who knows what other unstable American hating regime from getting nuclear weapons, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has taken us back to the 50s of coping with nuclear fallout.

The government has a surprising new message: Do not flee. Get inside any stable building and don't come out till officials say it's safe.

The advice is based on recent scientific analyses showing that a nuclear attack is much more survivable if you immediately shield yourself from the lethal radiation that follows a blast, a simple tactic seen as saving hundreds of thousands of lives. Even staying in a car, the studies show, would reduce casualties by more than 50 percent; hunkering down in a basement would be better by far.